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Strikes in Yugoslavia: Implications for Industrial Democracy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Goldie Shabad
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In September, 1973, about 2,000 workers of the Zmaj factory in Belgrade went on strike. Politika, a Belgrade daily newspaper, reported that the director of the firm, surprised to see so many workers gathered in front of his office, believed (at first) that ‘they were protesting against the counter-revolutionary oppression in Chile’. He was shocked to discover soon after that the workers were not demonstrating in support of Allende but, instead, were demanding higher wages. The director should not have been so taken aback. The Zmaj strike is only one of the approximately 3,000 incidents of industrial conflict that have taken place in Yugoslavia since it experienced its first post-war strike in 1958.

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Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , July 1980 , pp. 293 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

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2 ‘Workplace democracy’ here means some degree of collective ownership (worker or societal) of the means of production and workers' control.

3 Part of the reason that few Western works on Yugoslav self-management have dealt with strikes is that reliable information about them is relatively scarce.

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67 These include Josip Županov, Slavko Milosavleski, Zoran Vidaković and Nebojsa Popov.

68 Županov, , ‘Employees’ Participation and Social Power in Industry', p. 40.Google Scholar

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